Author Archives: billgamesh

Image: ObjectsInFilm A decade after I was born the science fiction movie “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” depicted a race of horribly mutated humans living underground and worshiping a doomsday weapon designed to destroy the Earth. My parents were moviegoers and I dimly remember going to the theater as a boy to watch theContinue reading “Worshiping the Bomb”

Image: Atomic Heritage Foundation https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200316152211.htm It has been said we are all “children of Rome” in the modern world as much of our society functions like that empire did. The Romans were Neo-Liberals in that latifundialization eventually destroyed the fabric of their society- much like it is in the process of destroying the social fabricContinue reading “Fragile Empires”

Image: Smithsonian Though I am not a fan of Bob Zubrin or going to Mars I have to admit a chapter in his book “The Case for Mars” changed my worldview. The Chinese burning their exploration fleet of giant sailing ships was, for me, a very important lesson- though many of these history lessons IContinue reading “Burning the Superships”

image CNN https://www.ibtimes.com/nasa-warns-airburst-causing-asteroid-arriving-week-2940563 Whatever happens, whether you succeed or fail, people with high expectations always feel better. They usually attribute success to their superior ability and failure with “bad luck.”  The pure act of anticipation makes us happy. We enjoy imagining the better days ahead. People with mild depression are actually more realistic than healthyContinue reading “Optimism Bias and Extinction”

Gateway No Longer Mandatory for 2024 Moon Landing The Gateway never really made sense when the radiation environment makes any long duration missions impractical without a massive cosmic ray water shield. Eugene Parker explained this for the layman back in 2006 in a classic popular science article published in Scientific American: Shielding Space Travelers. InContinue reading “The Fat Workshop”

At this point in our likely short history, our only plan is greed. Spoiled rotten children bullying and lying to acquire more toys than their siblings. Greed has become our parent, our narcissistic enabler, our rai·son d’ê·tre. The agent of greed, money, is the god of this world. Speculation, or gambling, or the market, orContinue reading “No Plan, No Future”

The man who could have taken humankind to the farthest reaches of the solar system is gone. He was a personal hero of mine due to his work on Nuclear Pulse Propulsion and is the second named scientist in the Parker-Dyson-Spudis continuum. I was never really a space enthusiast until 2003 when I read GeorgeContinue reading “Freeman Dyson”

image CNBC Converting the United States Military Industrial Complex into something that will create a sustainable future for humankind will be the great feat of history. Nothing impossible about it or even extremely challenging in terms of technology. It is what we should do as a species if we want our children and grandchildren toContinue reading “Bernie and the Green New Space Deal”

To paraphrase Jung, “It is the revolt of the powerless, the insatiable greed of the have-nots, and they are likely to gravitate toward powerful collective ideologies, mass movements, and institutions.” A friend is currently taking a leadership class at her workplace and interestingly, someone fairly high up in her organization, way above her, is alsoContinue reading “Truth to Power”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2017/03/28/physicist-wants-to-beam-solar-energy-back-from-moons-surface/#4e9820405743 The Doomsday Clock has been advanced and a possible global pandemic is spreading. And…there is the subject of Space Based Solar Power as the cure for climate change, which is just as important as Mutually Assured Destruction and another black death. Existential threats are a recurring theme on this blog as the reason spaceContinue reading “100 seconds, Coronavirus, and Criswell”